The for riders on Regional Transportation District buses plying one of metro Denver’s busiest roads. But for Sean Buchan, a co-owner of Cerebral Brewing, the Aurora phase could amount to a second economic body blow.

His brewery at East Colfax Avenue and Monroe Street in Denver has endured 18 months of construction, slicing 20% out of his bottom line as chain-link fencing and closed side streets have chased away customers.ÌıNow Buchan will have to face a new round of disruption at one of his other breweries at Colfax and Florence Street — four miles to the east in Aurora.

“We saw people who would no longer drive to get here,” he said of the overhaul that began in Denver in the fall of 2024, generally starting at Broadway and moving east. “We saw a drastic year-over-year reduction in business.”

One consolation for businesses along the Aurora segment of the project is that planners are employing a totally different design than what’s being used for the 5.4 miles of Colfax from Broadway to Yosemite Street in Denver. The Denver segment is closer to a full “bus rapid transit” design — with dedicated bus lanes in the center of the street. But in Aurora, buses will migrate to the sides of Colfax and join the general flow of traffic once they cross the line dividing the two cities.

Travel time for bus riders is projected to drop by 15 to 30 minutes along the corridor from what it is on the Route 15 and Route 15L buses that serve East Colfax now. The new rapid bus system, promising easier boarding and a pickup frequency of less than every five minutes, is expected to launch at the end of 2027.

“While construction on the Aurora portion of the corridor is expected to move at a quicker pace and with less disruption than work occurring in Denver, we recognize that any level of construction activity can be challenging for nearby businesses,” saidÌıShawn Albert,Ìıthe deputy project director for the East Colfax Avenue BRT project.

Albert works for Denver’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, which is overseeing the entire effort.

“We will maintain access to all businesses during the construction, but some temporary pedestrian detours may be needed to accommodate specific construction activities,” he said.

Several businesses in the Denver section of the project have closed or moved because of the construction, including Misfit Snack Bar and Colfax and Cream, a coffee and ice cream joint.

Those who haven’t turned out the lights are on the edge, Buchan said.

“Everyone who didn’t close wasÌıwaving the white flag and asking for help,” he said.

Buchan received $15,000 from Denver’s , which he said covered about a month’s worth of payroll for his dozen or so employees. He has had to cut his staff’s working hours but hasn’t laid anyone off.

“It’s been pretty brutal,” he said.

Mixed-flow traffic, station improvements

Work on Aurora’s 3.1-mile segment of the Colfax project is set to kick off Wednesday with utility work near Havana Street, Albert said. Work will generally proceed from west to east over the life of the project, with the eastern terminus at Interstate 225, near the Anschutz Medical Campus.

More involved station work will begin this summer, Albert said. The total cost for the Aurora segment is nearly $26 million — $14 million of which comes from city funds.

Carlie Campuzano, Aurora’s deputy director of transportation and mobility, said there will be 22 stations in the city — 11 on each side of Colfax.

“There will be station improvements,” she said. “There will be a shelter added at every station.”

The stations will have ticket kiosks so that fares don’t have to be paid onboard the buses, saving time. Some of the stations will feature real-time arrival screens and level boarding, making it seamless for wheelchairs and people with disabilities to get on and off the buses.

Campuzano said that while the Aurora segment looks and works differently from the Denver segment, it meets the standards for what constitutes a bus rapid transit system.

“For BRT, there’s a menu for different strategies,” she said.

According to , the organization posited that there is no single way to design a project, saying “… flexible systems are important, especially since many BRT systems operate in dynamic urban environments.”

“While a majority of BRT (lines) … operate at least a portion of the system in some form of dedicated bus lanes (median, side, or curb-running), a majority also have a portion of the system that also operates in mixed flow, which highlights the flexibility of BRT,” the organization said.

Mixed flow is what Aurora is getting, meaning the buses will ride with the overall traffic flow on Colfax rather than in a bus-only lane. But buses will receive priority signalization at intersections — “an early green or an extended green time,” according to Campuzano — to keep them moving swiftly.

Jill Locantore, the executive director of the pro-transit , is disappointed that the design on the Denver side of the project didn’t extend into Aurora.

“I think it’s a misnomer to call it bus rapid transit in Aurora without dedicated bus lanes,” she said. “When the buses are running in mixed flow, it will not be rapid because the buses will be stuck in traffic.”

Locantore holds out hope that if BRT notably improves the transit experience on the 8.5-mile corridor over the next few years, the side lanes of East Colfax in Aurora could eventually be turned into exclusive bus lanes.

“Making it a dedicated bus lane just takes paint and signs,” she said.

The reason behind Aurora’s less-robust approach to BRT lies beyond the dynamics of East Colfax itself, said Doug Monroe, RTD’s manager of corridor planning. While the Denver stretch of the project is buttressed by alternating east-west routes to help relieve traffic on Colfax — East 13th and 14th avenues to the south and East 17th and 18th avenues to the north — Aurora’s street grid is different.

“Aurora does not have that capacity on their parallel street network,” Monroe said. “The city was concerned about impacts to traffic on Colfax.”

Up to 35 articulated buses — larger versions of a typical city bus — will move through the entire Colfax BRT corridor on any given day, Monroe said. While much of RTD’s ridership was decimated by the agency’s orders to severely restrict capacity on its buses and trains during the coronavirus pandemic, Monroe said the Colfax corridor has bounced back faster than the system as a whole in recent years.

It now has 16,000 to 17,000 daily riders, he said, compared to nearly 22,000 before the pandemic restrictions.

“Colfax is the busiest bus line in the system,” Monroe said.

Not a one-size-fits-all project

Shoshana Lew, the executive director of the Colorado Department of Transportation, is comfortable with the lack of design continuity between the Denver and Aurora segments.

“There are pros and cons to each approach,” she said in an interview with The Denver Post.

Other bus rapid transit corridors in metro Denver that are under construction, such as the , or in the planning stages, like Federal and boulevards, aren’t carbon copies of each other, Lew said.

“I think it’s phenomenal that each city is taking the lead in what it looks like,” she said. “None of these are going to be one-size-fits-all for all areas.”

Aurora’s BRT efforts come at a time when the city is making efforts to rejuvenate the Colfax corridor, which has struggled with crime and underinvestment for years. Last fall, Aurora voters approved the formation of a , which will have the power to draw on growing tax dollars in the form of tax-increment financing to invest in the corridor. The goal is to support small businesses, housing, safety and neighborhood improvements.

As the overall Colfax BRT project hit its brewery owner Buchan said he was worried about how his Aurora location would be impacted once the machines and work crews moved into place.

“I think some of the damage has been done — people see Colfax as hard to navigate,” he said.

Cerebral Brewing in Aurora, which opened in 2022 as an offshoot of the original Denver location, serves as the company’s production facility. It also has a taproom that Buchan hopes will remain a neighborhood gathering spot.

Despite being impacted twice by construction over the course of the project, Buchan says he’s a transit supporter and hopes bus rapid transit, once up and running, will inject life into the corridor and benefit the businesses that make Colfax, Colfax.

Arvada police officers responded to the fatal crash on RTD’s G Line at Allison Street, near the street’s intersection with Ridge Road, at about 12:15 a.m. Sunday, .

The pedestrian, who has not been publicly identified, was hit on a section of track between the Arvada Ridge and Olde Town Arvada stations.

“All rail crossing warning signals appear to be working at the time of the crash,” police said in a statement on social media.

The runs along an 11-mile route between Ward Road Station in Wheat Ridge and Union Station in Denver. No service alerts were active for the route at 9:30 a.m. Sunday.

Additional information about the crash, including why the person was on the tracks, was not immediately available. Officers were reviewing surveillance video as part of the investigation, police said.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

The Colorado Clean Transit Enterprise and Regional Transportation District announced a $9.3 million grant agreement Thursday that will fund increased bus frequency, restored routes and new regional transit connections across the Denver metro area, including a proposed new route between Longmont and DIA.

The funding comes through Senate Bill 24-230, a transit funding program approved by the Colorado Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis last year. RTD spokesman Kiernan Maletsky said the Longmont-to-DIA route is still in the early planning stages and no launch date has been determined.

“The first step, we just got this grant agreement signed that gives us the opportunity to explore implementing these services through state funding, in conjunction with our local funding,� Maletsky said in a phone interview Friday.

According to a news release from the Colorado Department of Transportation, the grant will also support increased service frequency on several existing RTD routes, the return of dormant routes and added capacity during large events.

Maletsky said the new Longmont airport connection would still need to go through RTD’s regular service planning process before it could move forward.

“We’re really thrilled that the state has created a funding source that will let us explore some of these service options,� Maletsky said.

He said RTD typically evaluates service changes three times per year, but officials do not yet know when discussions about the Longmont route specifically will occur. He said that it would “certainly be over the course of the next year” but did not have specific dates to provide.

The state funding requires RTD to provide matching local funds, according to Maletsky.

In the CDOT release, RTD General Manager and CEO Debra Johnson said the agreement comes as transit agencies continue facing rising operating costs.

“Collaborations like these will only be more important as RTD partners with the communities it serves to provide the services that customers need,� Johnson said in the release.

Last year, Longmont-based airport shuttle service abruptly closed, leaving customers scrambling for other options.

Former Longmont City Councilmember and current RTD Board Director Karen Benker said residents in Longmont have been pushing for a direct airport connection for months, especially following Eight Black’s closure.

“I have never gotten so many emails from Longmont constituents ever,� Benker said, estimating she received roughly 150 emails over a three- to four-month period asking for better airport transit options.

Benker said she has been working with RTD staff on the proposal because of Longmont¶¶Òõap growing population and the number of residents who commute or travel frequently for work.

“A lot of the folks that work in Boulder, and may travel for business, live in Longmont or Lafayette or Louisville,� Benker said.

According to Benker, early discussions around the proposed route included hourly service that could run roughly from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., though she emphasized plans are still preliminary and would need approval from the RTD board. She said RTD could expand service later if ridership numbers are strong.

Benker also said RTD has been discussing the route with DIA officials as DIA looks for ways to reduce parking demand by encouraging more employees to take transit to work. The proposed route would serve both travelers and airport workers, she said.

The , housed within the Colorado Department of Transportation, was created by the Legislature in 2021 to help fund expanded transit service and zero-emission transportation projects across Colorado.

Operating Saturdays, Sundays and holidays through Labor Day, the will run from the termination of RTD’s light rail W Line at the Jefferson County Government Center. It will stop at Matthews/Winters Park, Dinosaur Ridge, the Red Rocks Trading Post, downtown Morrison and the Morrison Natural History Museum, running approximately every 15 minutes from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The shuttle’s purpose is to make attractions in the Red Rocks-Morrison area accessible to all populations and reduce traffic impacts. Fewer cars also means fewer parking headaches at the Dakota Ridge trailhead and the main Matthews/Winters lot.

“Access to our region’s most iconic landscapes shouldn’t depend on owning a vehicle or winning a battle for parking,” said Aaron Roth, director of Jefferson County Parks & Open Space, in a news release. “I’m excited that the Westracks shuttle makes our parks available to all without traffic jams.â€�

passed the House Monday on a 39-26 vote. The bill needs a final procedural vote in the Senate before it moves to Polis. The governor is expected to sign the measure into law.

The bill is the product of lawmakers’ recent and growing interest in RTD’s governance. SB-150 would trim the district’s currently all-elected board from 15 members to nine, with the new board selected in a hybrid setup. Five of those members would be elected to represent specific districts, while the remaining four would be appointed by the governor.

One of those appointees would be plucked from a nominee list drawn up by the Denver Regional Council of Governments, and another must be a current or former member of the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents many RTD train and bus operators.

Those changes would take effect starting with the 2028 election.

The measure was born of the RTD Accountabilty Committee, established by lawmakers. It recently recommended shrinking the board and overhauling how members earn their place on it. It comes as lawmakers and Polis’ office have moved to build denser housing in transit-rich areas, largely along the Front Range.

That multiyear push is intended to solve the housing crisis — but it also seeks to boost the use of public transit while curbing emissions from cars.

But doing that, in turn, is dependent on a robust transit system.

“Our bill is about providing a strong transit system for all parts of the metro area for workers, youth, seniors and people with disabilities,” Rep. Meg Froelich, an Englewood Democrat sponsoring the bill, said in a statement. “RTD has unfortunately not been able to bounce back since the pandemic the way that other transit agencies around the country have, and it is clear that change is needed to deliver reliable transit for Coloradans.”

When the accountability committee released its recommendations, Miller Hudson, a retired public policy consultant, dissented from most other members of the committee. He said a hybrid board of elected and appointed members “would be the first step toward destroying RTD” because it would reduce the agency’s responsiveness to residents of the agency’s service area, which reaches eight counties.

In addition to overhauling the board, SB-150 as passed would increase the pay for board members, from $12,000 to $36,000, with the elected chair earning more. It would also direct RTD to contract with a third party to study paratransit services, and it would more clearly spell out members’ duties in state law.

The bill would explicitly prohibit conflicts of interest, and the bill would give the governor the authority to remove members who miss two consecutive meetings without cause or for other “malfeasance” in office.

Burnham Yard sits on land once inhabited by the Ute and Cheyenne tribes, and so one member of the 26 various constituents on the city’s Small Area Plan community advisory committee offered a prayer to an Indigenous mother and the stars at a Wednesday night gathering.

They prayed for peace in the La Alma Lincoln Park community. And they prayed for peace, too, in this meeting.

After long enough, though, discussion grew contentious around the future of Eighth Avenue, a thoroughfare that stretches east from Sun Valley all the way to Montclair, into the Broncos’ plans for a new stadium district at Burnham Yard. In late March, the Broncos submitted their initial infrastructure master plan on the Burnham redevelopment to the city and Eighth Avenue serves as a primary artery for flow in and out of the district.

A section of the infrastructure master plan proposes both a curved and expanded three-lane Eighth Avenue. For nearly 30 minutes Wednesday night, the Small Area Plan community advisory committee — comprised of local community members and representatives from the Broncos, RTD and the Colorado Department of Transportation alike — deliberated on the influx and outflow of traffic that could bring to the historic La Alma Lincoln Park neighborhood.

Some were supportive. Helen Giron-Mushfiq, of the La Alma Neighborhood Association, told The Post the next day that the expansion of Eighth Avenue would be the best way to “get people out of the area” on game days.

Others were not.

“It’s like,” one neighborhood-association member chimed in, “how would you like your displacement to look?”

Amid the push-and-pull, the city of Denver and the Broncos continue to march toward a Small Area Plan for the organization’s new mixed-use stadium district, which the city — according to slides presented to advisory-committee members Wednesday — expects to put in front of the City Council late this year .

“The initial submission of our Infrastructure Master Plan in March represents an early step in a collaborative, ongoing process with the city and community,â€� Broncos chief communications officer Patrick Smyth told The Post. “As we shape this vision at Burnham Yard together, the plan will continue to evolve to best integrate with the surrounding neighborhoods and reflect community needs.â€�

The initial submission shows the most detailed look yet at the organization’s plans for the new stadium district at Burnham, from a proposed layout of several parking structures to a breakdown of the district’s different areas.

A ‘tailgate park,’ and more information on district features

At an initial community meeting hosted by the Broncos in February, plan architect Sasaki confirmed that the total size of the stadium district at Burnham had expanded to 150 acres. Two months later, the infrastructure master plan now offers a glimpse of what’ll actually lie inside.

The stadium itself will take up just 30 to 35 of those acres, according to the plan. The rest will be a combination of mixed-use development (50 to 60 acres), public and private streets (25 to 30 acres), and “open space” (15 to 20 acres) — including a planned “neighborhood park” in a cluster of buildings just west of La Alma Lincoln Park and a “linear park” to the immediate southwest of West Sixth Ave and Osage Street. A previously outlined “tailgate area” has now been labeled a “tailgate park,” located directly south of the stadium and Eighth Avenue.

The plan, too, describes this Burnham development as divided into “five distinct development zones.” One of them — sitting to the east of a new main north-to-south thoroughfare next to the stadium dubbed “Broncos Way” — is an “Entertainment Zone,” likely to encapsulate anything from a potential new concert venue to shopping outlets, restaurants, a hotel and more.

“The Entertainment Zone serves as a high-energy destination with a dense, intimate urban form and curated retail experiences,” the plan reads.

Another area, the “North Zone,” is described as “residential in focus” and “designed to complement La Alma Lincoln Park.” The Broncos have discussed building a hotel inside the district in conversations with community constituents, and connected apartment complexes have become a wider staple of modern mixed-use stadium districts.

From a local planning and economic perspective, The Post sent the Broncos’ infrastructure master plan to Brad Segal, the director of the Denver-based real estate and planning firm . Segal said he was “particularly struck” by the Broncos’ vision to preserve and renovate existing historical aspects of the railyard — such as an abandoned locomotive shop, which team officials have discussed internally developing into a food hall.

Segal, though, noted one immediate concern: theÌıplacement of that “Entertainment Zone” directly adjacent to the La Alma Lincoln Park neighborhood, a working-class, majority-Latino communityÌıthat experiencedÌıwidespread displacement in the 1970s with the construction of the Auraria campus. Those “scars run deep,” as Segal said — a fact clear in ongoing Small Area Plan committee discussions, as community members like Giron-Mushfiq simply aren’t comfortable with any kind of large-scale development so close to a historic neighborhood.

“We don’t trust ’em,” Giron-Mushfiq said. “We’ll put it lightly.”

There aren’t many places the Broncos could reposition that district without bumping up against the neighborhood. And theoretically, that placement would allow La Alma residents to enjoy such amenities, as Segal pointed. The draw, too, could attract more foot traffic to businesses along the Art District on Santa Fe.

“But, if it results in pushing up housing costs, rental rates, property values – that¶¶Òõap going to force many people to leave who maybe don’t want to leave because of the economic pressure,” Segal said. “And acknowledging the history of the neighborhood and what it has already endured 50 to 60 years ago — I would say residents would be justified in fearing those types of pressures and changes moving forward.â€�

Parking and transit information, with Eighth Avenue the key

In the plan’s executive summary, the Broncos describe the light rail station at 10th and Osage as “the district’s heart” and later refer to it as “anchoring a transit-oriented framework.”

That would hinge on the district’s ability to attract foot traffic through RTD lines, as RTD has seen a slight bump in ridership in recent months, according to the to the previous year. Community members and nearby residents, though, are heavily concerned about the impact of gameday and non-gameday traffic in the area — including those who have reviewed the Broncos’ most recent plan.

“There’s some things that I like about it,” Giron-Mushfiq said, who’s on the Small Area Plan advisory committee. “But the biggest problem is they haven’t really addressed the parking.”

They do, in some sense. The plan envisions 5,000 to 7,500 available parking spaces on gamedays, with a mixture of seven different below-grade, above-ground and surface parking lots. On gameday, too, the plan anticipates a majority of traffic flow both entering the district from Eighth Avenue to the west and from Sixth Avenue to the south.

The Broncos, however, are proposing a slew of significant road changes with those traffic patterns: realigning West Eighth Avenue further south, removing some existing infrastructure from West Sixth Avenue, and proposing future on and off-ramps that align with planned $50 million repairs — — to the Sixth Avenue viaduct.

“For Eighth Avenue, the background traffic, the additional traffic from the development and then the complexity of the roadway — traveling over rail lines like light rail, whether it remains grade separated — there’s a huge amount of complexity there and I couldn’t guess how it will turn out,” Stephen Wilson, a senior development project administrator with the city, told The Post. “Some of them, I have a pretty good idea. I’ve done this long enough where I have a pretty good sense of how it will turn out.

“I can’t tell how Eighth is going to turn out yet.”

It is likely, though, to be one of the most high-profile infrastructure projects around the stadium and perhaps one of the most costly. The stadium itself is set to be fully paid for by the Walton-Penner Group. Infrastructure to construct roads and sidewalks around the district, however, will be funded by a combination of state and city funding, as Mayor Mike Johnston told The Post in September.

“I see a big dollar bill right next to, ‘How do we improve infrastructure for egress?’” said Geoffrey Propheter, a professor at the CU Denver School of Public Affairs .

Propheter also noted that infrastructure will likely beÌıfunded through theÌıpotential implementation of a tax-increment financing district, a form of public subsidy that would borrow against expected future growth in tax revenue within the Broncos’ stadium district and apply that revenue to infrastructure costs on the front end. The Denver Urban Renewal Authority is conducting a study of Burnham Yard to determine whether the area is “blighted” under Colorado state law, which would set in motion the TIF process.

Phases of implementation

So what’s next? A three-phase approach to development at Burnham, according to the plan. And a three-step approach inside of that first phase.

“The plan follows the typical blueprint, which is stadium first, non-stadium second,” Propheter said.

The Broncos, though, do intend to address key elements of the surrounding stadium district while constructing the stadium itself, still targeting a 2031 opening. Phase 1A, the plan details, will involve environmental cleanup and roadway and transit construction. Phase 1B will involve the construction of parking facilities. Phase 1C, meanwhile, will see the Broncos begin construction on their “Entertainment Zone.”

Stephen Wilson called the Broncos’ plan to first build out infrastructure and then supporting facilities “absolutely logical.” The plan defines Phases 2 and 3 as more general construction in northern and southern parts of the district — likely involving residential properties — which Wilson said would be largely market-driven.

“So if next year, multifamily housing, financing is great and demand is great, if employment and people’s ability to pay for rental places is great … the conditions could change, and then some of that could come online a lot faster,” Wilson said. “Or interest rates could remain high, construction costs could remain high, and it might take more time.”

Regardless of how exactly the phases are developed, there are a broad set of processes, negotiations, discussions and decisions to be made in the coming months at various levels of government and among and between neighborhood groups and the Broncos.

“We’re definitely very concerned with the impacts and then the impression of the impacts and understanding the breadth of those and the magnitude of those and addressing concerns,” Wilson said. “It¶¶Òõap also balanced against city building, and when we look at overall citywide, we do need infill development overall. We do need additional housing. We’re supporting housing and affordability as a city in all the ways we can, but there are also macroscopic market factors that we’re trying to work with, too.

“That¶¶Òõap the fun part about city building. That¶¶Òõap why I love doing this job is it¶¶Òõap hard to come up with a good city that works for everybody. That¶¶Òõap certainly the goal.”

The deal with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway would use existing freight tracks, allowingÌıFront Range Passenger Rail “starter service” to start by January 2029. Trains would reach speeds up to 79 miles per hour on three 80-minute round-trips a day, stopping in eight cities.

State leaders’ timetable shows design work and engineering mostly completed by the end of this year, using the initial $5.58 million from RTD and $3.8 million from the , the business enterprise arm of the .Ìı RTD directors committed to support the terms of a financial framework in which the agency would pay $156 million overall for the starter service, and the CTIO commissioners committed to paying $176 million — plus an additional $10 million to $12 million a year each to cover operating costs.

State transportation commissioners and the board also signed off, and the Colorado board approved paying an additional $10 million to $12 million a year for train operations.

BNSF owns the tracks. The framework agreement negotiated by Lisa Kaufmann, a senior advisor to Polis, required approvals by all five boards before it could be finalized on June 15. The deal lays out terms for track-sharing as passenger trains connect eight northern Front Range cities (Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, Westminster, Broomfield, Longmont, Louisville, Loveland) without disrupting freight operations.

“It¶¶Òõap been a long time coming,â€� CTIO board chairman Cecil Gutierrez said. “There are many of us who have been dreaming of this for decades.â€�

RTD directors voted 14 to 1 to approve the initial funding and support the project after hearing from rail transit advocates, several of them referring to RTD’s failure to complete the promised FasTracks rail after collecting sales tax revenues from residents since 2005. “Supporting this will begin a long process of restoring confidence in RTD,” Colorado Passenger Rail Association president Jack Wheeler said.

FasTracks plans include a train linking Denver and Boulder.

“An objective evaluation of our future revenues and existing costs quickly reveals that we simply will never have the funds to build out the system as originally planned,â€� said RTD Director Patrick O’Keefe, who chairs the 15-member board. “We need to be creative and find alternatives to honor the promises made to communities across our service area,â€� he said, and launching the starter service in partnership with state agencies “is a very encouraging example of this creativity.”

It¶¶Òõap the first step toward the proposed, broader Front Range Passenger Rail system linking Fort Collins to Pueblo with 10 trains a day running a route along Interstate 25.

Front Range Passenger Rail District officials have held more than 20 meetings in cities, rallying support for a possible ballot measure in November asking voters along the I-25 corridor to approve a sales tax increase. FRPRD leaders are also backing state that would redefine district boundaries to remove Castle Rock, Greeley, Lone Tree, and Monument — cities that lack robust support for rail transit.

“We’re very hopeful about passing a ballot measure this November,” FRPRD director Sal Pace told RTD directors Tuesday night, asking them to invest an additional $5 million for the broader rail project.

“Partnership with RTD would facilitate moving us toward that ballot question,” Pace said. “We are going to succeed with you. And you are going to succeed with us.” Pace said a ballot measure for the broader Front Range Passenger Rail service likely would raise $262 million a year.

RTD is facing a budget crisis with a $215 million annual deficit – forcing agency directors to consider 20% to 36% cuts in bus and train service. However, an agency savings account holds sales tax revenues collected for FasTracks — with a current balance of $191 million. That’s the account RTD officials plan to tap to help fund starter service.

“All the rail lines will meet in Denver. Denver is going to be the biggest winner,â€� RTD Director Karen Benker said. “The other big winners will be Fort Collins, Pueblo and Colorado Springs,â€� once the starter service begins, Benker said. “This is the link that has to be built first.”

If an anticipated state grant for $40 million doesn’t come through, RTD directors must cut “another 16% of services,” according to a before meetings Tuesday night.

Directors haven’t decided which routes to cut.

“It’s like signing your own death warrant,” Director JoyAnn Ruscha said.

A 20% service cut would reduce overall spending by about $62 million, helping balanceÌıRTD’s $1.5 billion annual budget, RTD general manager Debra Johnson and Kelly Mackey, the chief financial officer, said in a presentation to directors. Cutting service by 36% “is totally in your purview,” Johnson told directors, warning that if they don’t correct RTD’s budget deficit next year “we will be putting ourselves in a very precarious position.”

The cuts almost certainly will complicate efforts to reverse RTD’s declining ridership, down by nearly 40% since 2019 across RTD’s 2,345-square-mile service area, which spans eight counties.

RTD managers also recommended that directors pursue a ballot measure in 2028 to ask voters for funding to shore up public transit finances. The 15-member, publicly elected board of directors must make decisions by the end of May, managers added, warning that a delay would hurt the development of a balanced 2027 budget.

But Director Karen Benker, who leads RTD’s finance committee, is challenging the cuts. Benker has proposed fare increases to raise revenue, furlough days for managers, ending overtime pay for bus and train operators, corporate sponsorships, debt refinancing, and a tougher crackdown on bus and train riders who don’t pay fares by installing turnstiles at Denver International Airport.

“Cutting service by 20% is crazy. Combined with the reductions already made during COVID, these proposed cuts risk pushing RTD into a downward spiral,â€� Benker said in an emailed response. “I cannot support the level of cuts currently being proposed by management. RTD needs to get to work — dig in, tighten up the numbers, and identify the funding required to avoid severe service cuts. Customers come first.â€�

At a recent, closed executive session, agency managers revealed the scope of the service cuts they recommend, and “the entire board looked stunned,” Benker said.

RTD Director Patrick O’Keefe, chairman of the board, said no final decisions have been made but that directors know the agency faces a fundamental financial problem. “Without spending less or bringing in more money, we will be forced into far more significant impacts in the near future,” O’Keefe said.

Director Chris Nicholson said cuts in bus and train service along suburban as well as central urban routes must be considered. The smartest approach is “to cut the service people do not use,” Nicholson said. “We know how many people board each train and bus. Those passenger counts should drive our decisions.”

RTD financial planners have warned that an annual $215 million budget deficit must be corrected by 2027 to prevent credit agencies from downgrading RTD’s status. Agency planners already have worked out “non-service” cuts from departmental realignments, layoffs, and contract changes for about $84 million in savings.

Johnson told directors that measures such as raising fares won’t be sufficient, and Mackey said corrective action to balance the budget is essential for the “viability” of public transit.

For metro-Denver residents, service cuts will mean “the bus goes fewer places and less often,” said Saigopal Rangaraj, co-leader of Greater Denver Transit, a public transportation advocacy group. “It makes journeys on transit more cumbersome or entirely impossible. We will see more traffic as people who can afford to will choose to drive. … People who can’t afford to buy a car will be left using a less-useful system.”

Those toll revenues — about $62 million a year from I-25 and I-70, not including fines paid by violators caught crossing double white lines — have been earmarked mostly for highway construction projects over the next decade. The projects include the overhaul of I-70 west of Denver and the proposed expansion of Interstate 270.

But the Bustang “has become a backbone of the state’s transit operations along the interstates,” giving Coloradans “more transportation choices to get where they need to go,” Colorado Department of Transportation Director Shoshana Lew said Friday.

The at current levels costs $50 million a year, and keeping the state’s fleet of 80 buses rolling over the next five years otherwise would require annual of around $30 million, CDOT officials told state transportation commissioners at a workshop session on Wednesday.

Colorado lawmakers’ initial grant funding to support the service as an experiment runs out in July.

run as frequently as every 45 minutes on I-25 and I-70, and on numerous “Outrider” routes around Colorado. Fares for riders boarding at Denver Union Station range from $10 to downtown Fort Collins, $12 to Colorado Springs, $28 to Glenwood Springs and $43 to Grand Junction (a 230-mile route).

This week, Lew told the state transportation commissioners that CDOT can tap “excess toll revenues” from I-25 express lanes to pay for the I-25 Bustang service. CDOT can do the same along I-70, though the high cost of the Bustang service linking Denver with Grand JunctionÌılikely will also require other funds, she said.

A 2009 state law allows the use of express lane revenues for public transit, in addition to road construction projects, along the interstates.Ìı However, the Ìırestricts the use of the revenues to projects along the roads where the tolls were collected.

Drivers in Colorado take more than 34 million express lane trips a year, according to a CDOT .

Sustaining Colorado’s intercity bus transit is “a top priority,” Lew wrote in a letter to commissioners. Bustang provides “vital connections across our state. …a national model of success,” she said.

Over the past two months, CDOT leaders have been meeting with city and county officials, and business groups, along I-25 and I-70, looking for ways to sustain Bustang. Lew told commissioners most would support using toll revenues “as long as there was a commitment that the capital projects in the 10-year plan would get built.�

Bustang has been expanding. CDOT officials last year added a second daily run between Denver and Crested Butte. They launched aÌıBustang Outrider route linking Sterling in northeastern Colorado withÌı.

A state transit connections is exploring possible new routes, such as service between Gunnison and Montrose in southwestern Colorado; Limon and Denver; and Salida and Colorado Springs.

Statewide, Bustang ridership has tripled since 2019 – a counterpoint to the lagging ridership on Regional Transportation District buses and trains within metro Denver — with 385,248 intercity bus boardings in 2025, up 24% from 2024, CDOT records show.

The car, which is blocking A, B, G and N line trains from reaching Union Station, was first reported on the tracks at about 2 p.m. Sunday, RTD spokesperson Pauline Haberman said.

As of 4:15 p.m. Sunday, a tow truck was on scene to remove the vehicle, Haberman said.

Bus shuttles replaced the partially blocked light rail lines throughout the afternoon, including between:

• Union Station and 38th-Blake Station on the
• Union Station and 41st & Fox Station on the
• Union Station and 48th & Brighton National Western Center Station on the

cited a trespasser on the tracks as the cause of the closure. The tracks remained closed at 4:30 p.m. Sunday.

Information on why the car was left on the tracks was not immediately available on Sunday.

This is a developing story and may be updated.